The Battle for the Daintree

This battle we lost. It was a war, however, that we won. The fight in the 80s to protect the stretch of pristine rainforest north of Cape Tribulation and on up to the Bloomfield River is Queensland’s most famous environmental campaign. It followed in close proximity to Terania Creek and Franklin blockades, but while the former had been fought over logging, and the latter over a dam, this one was over a 30km stretch of road, a road that would slice through “a living museum of plant and animal species in what is one of the few remaining examples of undisturbed coastal rainforests in the world”. This quote, however, does not come from an ecologist, or a blockader, or a ‘greenie’; it comes from an entirely more unexpected source: Joh Bjelke-Petersen, the conservative, ruthlessly authoritarian Queensland Premier from 1968-1987. That Joh said this (in 1980) shows not only how special this rainforest was, it demonstrates the egregious nature of his involvement in wantonly destroying it.

To some extent, that the area remained pristine for so long was a matter of luck, says Bill Wilkie, writer of The Daintree Blockade: The Battle for Australia’s Tropical Rainforests. Everywhere south on the coast had already been logged or converted to cane or cattle country. “[But] the unique thing about the Daintree,’ says Wilkie, “was that, up until the 80s, or even now, it was inaccessible. You had to go over the Daintree River on a car ferry. And that inaccessibility meant it was far less developed than a lot of other areas on the coast.” The small population, the cost, and the sheer difficulty of pushing a road through here meant this area stayed relatively untouched.

The history of wanting a road through the area had been a long one. Back in the 1930s, after the Cook Highway between Cairns to Mossman had opened, aerial surveyors looked for a route for a road north from the Daintree River. World War Two, however, halted further progress, and the project was quietly put on the backburner. Not everyone forgot about it, however, and a group of pro-development locals pushed for